A mid-morning event in our area of Hillsboro caught me by surprise, as a passing shower pelted apartment windows with the telltale sound of mild percussion.  Peering outside, I invited Alice to share my gaze, because our Bermuda grass lawn was being whitened by nickel-sized hail.

No lightning or thunder accompanied the gray clouds, so the hailstorm, although predicted by weather forecasters the day before, was unexpected.  Fortunately, the falling hail was not big enough to damage the automobiles parked outside, including the Ford Escape we call Betsy.

Ordinarily, such a distraction would not be newsworthy, except it preceded a phone call from Kaiser Permanente’s anticoagulation nurse.  For the second week in a row, Alice’s clotting level measured in the ideal range, denoting the warfarin medication is working as hoped.

Having one’s blood drawn frequently becomes old quickly, so I will take the weather anomaly as a portent of good news.  Why?  Because if Alice’s clotting level continues to stay at this level, soon her blood work will be done monthly, or even every six weeks.